


Undoom Patrol

by Bond_Girl



Category: DCU, Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Backstory, Falling In Love, Future Husbands, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Plot Twists, Porn with Feelings, Pursuit of Happiness, Secret Relationship, Secret Sex, Sharing Clothes, Shower Sex, Time Travel Fix-It, first they have the sex then they have the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:54:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bond_Girl/pseuds/Bond_Girl
Summary: John actually wanted to work with Neil Armstrong. Not with a hotshot like Larry Trainor.
Relationships: John Bowers/Larry Trainor
Comments: 18
Kudos: 99
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Undoom Patrol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JunoChipmunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunoChipmunk/gifts).



> FrozenPanther, have a very happy Yuletide! It was a joy to write for someone who wanted John and Larry to ride into the sunset together—as much as I did!

~~~

  


John actually wanted to work with Neil Armstrong.

He liked the test pilots who understood how the machine between their thighs worked. Not the show-off flyboys like Larry Trainor. All eagle instinct and not a grease spot on them. John wasn’t the kind of crew chief who was going to take shit. Not from hotshots who couldn’t tell an XLR from a broomstick.

And that was exactly the speech John gave to his new crew in a sweltering air base hangar. 

He couldn’t quite read why their silence was growing fidgety and uncomfortable as he went on. Not until somebody cleared a throat behind his back. 

John whipped around. And tripped, and fell into the bluest eyes. Six stunning feet of a smirking attitude poured into a crisp captain's uniform. Judging by how comfortably the guy slouched, he had been here a while. 

Was this an unannounced Hollywood visit? John wouldn't have put it past NASA. His collar was suddenly strangling him. 

"Captain Larry Trainor," the vision said almost pleasantly. "I wanted to wish you a great first day on the job. But I see you're already feeling right at home."

The earth didn't open its laughing maw and swallow John whole. Not as much as he wished for it. 

This would be a good time to reveal that John was a kind of guy who—had a thing for guys. The Air Force frowned upon it, so he kept it to himself. There were plenty of guys—who also liked other guys—outside the base, without uniforms involved. John wasn't ashamed to swing that way, but he liked his paycheck and he liked to keep things simple. 

So it was simple enough: no amount of hot pilot was going to interfere with John's workday. John didn’t make the best first impression, but he knew he was a good enough crew chief for anyone to swallow their pride. 

By noon, John somewhat recovered and decided that he was a little better prepared to meet his pilot in the flesh, but boy—did that bright-blue stare on him feel lethal. 

"What textbook do you recommend as Rocket Engines 101?" Trainor was twisting a wrench in his hands like he didn’t know what it was for. "For dummies?"

"Hey, I'm sorry if we got off on the wrong foot." John made it sound like a final apology, like he was about to leave. Also, because devastatingly handsome straight guys were best taken in small doses.

"No, it's okay," Trainor said after what seemed like a minute of John's frantic, painful heartbeats. "Nothing's like honest advice. I need to be well-rounded if I want to go to space. I'd also like you to show me around the engine. I'll make time."

He did make time. For an hour every day the glamorous Captain Trainor was now covering himself in motor grease like the rest of the crew. And so John reluctantly admitted that every rule has an exception. His was a six-foot tall, movie-star handsome, obstinate as hell, straight as a line pilot.

  


~~~

  


The communal army showers were a necessary evil for someone in the closet, and the California summers were hot. The engine-oil stink laced with sweat were potent and unbearable. Despite the fears of morality police, John was a grown man who could keep it down around people with the bits he was theoretically attracted to. It was no problem.

It only turned into some kind of punishment when Trainor started taking late-night showers about the same time as John. He’d arrive exhausted from whatever exercise regimen or engine manual he’d been putting himself through—strip without a word—face the wall and get pummeled by the shower jets forever. 

The bad thing was that John was getting worried about his pilot riding himself too hard. The good thing was that John could ogle unnoticed, for more than a second. And dream about his pilot guiding John and not a Mach-6 capable engine between his sleek thighs.

By now John was almost used to _professionally_ staring at this unattainable clothed behind—daily climbing up and down the ladder into the cockpit, but what mortal could get used to a naked god Larry Trainor.

So after weeks of John discreetly mapping out every curve and wet angle of Trainor’s chiseled backview, he got stupid. 

It was late, it was just the two of them, it was John not going off base and getting _some_ for the past couple of weeks. It was his pilot being so unfairly attractive. So John got hard. His hand kind of—slipped, wrapped itself against his aching cock. For one sweet stolen second, and he was going to stop the next.

It was like Larry Trainor had a built-in inappropriate boner detector: he turned around. Right at John and John’s regulation-prohibited hard on. His mouth opened. And stayed that way. 

John felt his career flashing before his eyes. Down the airbase shower drain. “It’s not what it looks like,” he blundered.

Trainor said sharply, “What is it then? A hose? A snake? And I thought you had better game, Bowers.” 

Against his better judgement, John heard himself laugh. 

Trainor flashed a cocky, yet so dismissive smile. “You need to get out more. Maybe check out some lady’s engine instead of—whatever this is.”

John couldn’t believe this was the conversation they were having instead of discussing his transfer to the toilet cleaning crew. 

Trainor was still smiling, now a little unsure. As if John was forgetting to answer a question that he didn’t remember being asked.

It blinded John to be the sole focus of this smile. He wasn’t sure what made him take a step or three towards it. Certainly not a high probability of getting punched in the eye by 180 pounds of lean and mean Air Force finest. 

It was the tiniest thing: Trainor was biting his lip. Which was the dumbest thing for John to hang his hopes on, but he’d been in a Larry Trainor special blue-ball hell for months.

Now that he had intruded into someone's naked and personal space, John braced himself for the inevitable pushback, for _pervert_ to be hurled in his teeth. Trainor’s eyes were so blue, and shocked wild. 

With a sudden and desperate sigh, he—leaned in and lightly traced his wet lips against John’s mouth. 

It was so unexpectedly tender that John kissed him. Really kissed him. Like they had a connection, and not a confused tryst in the showers, born out of forced proximity. And certainly not out of John secretly thinking Larry Trainor was a golden god. And who knew what in cosmic hell Larry thought he was doing so eagerly shoving his tongue in John’s mouth.

They backed themselves into a corner, against the slippery tile wall. Still wet and soapy, rubbing against each other, grabbing what they could get. And John couldn't get enough because come— on— a hard body like that. When he started kissing, biting onto the smooth edge between the tan and the pale on Larry’s neck, Larry came with a strangled shout. John pushed Larry's not inexpert hand down on himself, and the pleasure lavishly burned through him, but it was over too soon. John was left panting— undone and yet _not nearly done_. 

They stared at each other, now further apart. Trainor’s whole face was still open, unguarded but John could see how he was gathering to shut it down.

"Hey," said John. "Let's not get weird. Do you—want to go get a beer or something?"

"Yeah," said Trainor after a beat. "I'd like that."

"After you, Captain.” John graciously pointed to the pile of clean towels.

Trainor's mouth curved. "I think you can call me Larry."

And so Larry it was, all the way into a bar just off the air base. And Larry told John _everything_ , words just pouring out of him.

Larry grew up in a small conservative town in North Dakota, with one church and its straightjacket morals. He always wanted to fly airplanes and he made sure nothing got in his way of flying them. Not even his _inclinations_. Which had regularly led him astray before NASA, but Larry resolved to stay straight until he got into space. Thus the long cold showers. If it wasn't for John being apparently so fantastically fucking competent and showing off such great arm muscle, Larry would have iced himself all the way to the Moon. 

And John told Larry about his Lake Erie childhood, and his school teacher parents who _knew_ and still loved him exactly the same. About John having spent a week last summer driving (and fucking) a Stanford archeologist around Mesa Verde, this making him develop a keen interest in pre-contact history and civil rights. About how John joined the military because he wanted his life to mean something, but lately he'd been wondering if he could do more good elsewhere. And for more money. 

"Who's going to keep me safe up in the air if you leave," Larry said with the earnestness of someone punch-drunk on sex. "You're fascinating. All I have is a family. Maybe a space program." Larry sounded so wistful that John—almost— reached across the table and ruffled his still damp hair. 

"You're the best though," John said honestly. Mostly, about Larry being a natural up in the sky. The family life, he wasn’t going to touch that. "If any of us can have it all, it's you."

Larry's eyes got brighter. "I will," he raised his mostly empty glass. "To the stars for me, John. To finding the right cause, for you. And to everybody asking themselves how good of a time I had in the sack to get those teeth marks."

This was the moment when John knew that he was nowhere near done with Larry fucking Trainor.

  


~~~

  


Work certainly became more exciting.

The flight crew was relieved that Trainor had a little less edge these days, but they began to grumble about Bowers snapping.

The thing was: dealing with Larry was now making John feel strangely on edge.

He’d have handled it better if things below the belt were stirring, but the problem area was much higher: butterflies in his stomach. It was one thing to imagine how Larry Trainor might move under your greedy hands—the unblunted heat in his blue eyes—the fleeting, vulnerable slack of his body against yours—and a whole other hell to know. 

It was mortifying that Larry didn't seem to be equally fazed. Worse, it was like he didn't remember: he got up in the sky, he shone bright, he came down. Cool and distant like the stars themselves.

He no longer showed up for late-night showers and John got the message loud and clear.

  


~~~

  


This was why tonight in a bar, John was watching a drunk shout in Larry Trainor's poker face—and he wasn't getting in the way.

Larry had come in with some rowdy pilot crowd, and one of them, Mike, was getting rowdier. The entire bar heard by now that the guy was getting booted off the space program longlist. Suddenly if inevitably, it turned ugly. 

"You stole my place!" Mike was pushing Larry in the chest. "The only way they want you is because of your pretty face for the pictures. You look like them Hollywood homos."

John could—feel— Larry flinch. 

Without thinking, he started moving towards them, ready to tackle Larry away from trouble. A bar brawl was a pilot’s ticket to crop duster duty, not to the Moon.

"Mike," Larry said with a suddenly warm, wide smile. "Your ass must be jealous of all that shit that comes out of your mouth. Let me get you a drink." He slid into a drunk, expansive redneck drawl that had never been there before. "Hell, let me get everyone a drink."

Only John noticed how Larry's hand clasped the neck of his sweaty beer bottle, ready to break it—against someone's head if need be. 

The news of more booze broke the tension instead, and soon Mike was hugging a bar stool. John needed to get out of there, so he walked into the warm night, loud with crickets and passing cars.

Larry came out and stood next to him, staring at the starry sky. His smile was hard, sober and John wanted to have all the rights to kiss it better. "Have you heard? There are no homos in space."

"It's space's loss," John said earnestly. "And Earth's gain."

The grateful way Larry glanced at him, John could have died for him right there, in some truck's flickering tail lights.

  


~~~

  


Summer almost gone, John reached the point where he was ready to launch _himself_ into space if it helped him to get over Larry.

This windy morning after a routine flight, Larry just took his helmet off and he was shaking out his messy, too-long hair, and John just couldn't take it anymore. He needed to run his fingers through these soft dark strands—or die by not knowing how it felt.

Larry glanced at John and kind of froze—only for a second, then continued his smooth movie-star victory strut past him.

Desperation must have been flashing like runway lights all over John's face because Larry murmured to seemingly nobody, "There's a motel right off the Mojave exit. Get a room there tonight, after nine." 

John knew he heard the words, but they were failing to form a complete, meaningful sentence in his mind. 

Someone was passing by, and Larry said coolly, not lifting his eyes of his flight notes again, "Thank you, John. That'll be all." 

What just happened?! Did it really happen?! John spent the whole day trying not to yell at the clouds.

It was so inconceivable that a clean, careful guy like Larry would have been scoping out discreet rendezvous places. John was almost surprised when after a sharp turn of the road, the motel slid into view. His next worry scenario was that Larry would spend more than a minute’s thought on the risks of it all—and do the only logical thing: not show.

However, just as John was preparing himself for a long night of humiliation and a hot date with his fading flashbacks, there was a knock at the motel door. 

With his tanned skin on display under a half-buttoned shirt, Larry Trainor looked like sin—but also like he was having second thoughts. It took him a few tries to find John's eyes.

There was nothing more stupid and obvious than for two guys to gape at each other late at night, as they stood at a by-the-hour-motel door opened on a bed behind them. John yanked Larry inside by the front of his shirt, and Larry came. 

Stepping in close, John ran his hands up and down the smooth skin of Larry's bare arms. Because he finally could. Because here, in this moment of cheap and minimal privacy, the only person who had any say was Larry. 

Larry’s say was a hotly accusing stare. “If I fuck you, maybe I’ll stop thinking about you,” he blurted out. “It’s been torture.”

John felt like laughing. At Larry, at himself. 

Gently, gently, he started kissing down Larry's neck. “Was it? I was doing alright.” He scraped his teeth over the very same spot that made Larry come the first time. 

Larry full-body shivered. “You bastard,” he sighed and put his hands under John's shirt. 

Soon, they were rolling naked on the creaky bed. The off-center, out-of-kilter sensation was gone: the way Larry was into stroking his upper arms, shoulders, neck, it was making John feel seen by him at last. 

He ran his hands down and over to the small of Larry’s back and Larry just— arched— so eager, that John just died right there. John kissed him bruisingly, sucked on his tongue until Larry started to make tiny fucking sounds and tiny fucking movements, rolling his hips against the cheap rough sheets.

"Keep doing that—" John said with an absolute straight face, but gleeful, ecstatic inside because of course Larry would be like _this_. "And I'd have to fuck you."

Larry's bare ass bucked against—into John's cupped palms and this impatience whipped at him. It almost made him just give—in— to thrust his cock into someone else's willing body right there, but he was enjoying this shaky, slightly undone Larry Trainor too much.

He rolled Larry onto his back—gently and unhurriedly to make a goddamn point. Larry’s eyes darted with some emotion, and still John's fingers and mouth weren't leaving him, but letting him ride that feeling out. By the time John had him open and leaking, Larry was pushy again, panting, gorgeous. 

And still talking. “Do you have to be this good at everything?” 

John felt drunk on this already—on the salt on his tongue and on the heat on his fingers—but even more on Larry so clearly losing some long-fought battle within. 

As John started pushing past Larry's tight heat, he threaded his fingers through the dark hair until he could tug, pull Larry's head back a bit, let their eyes meet. Let Larry get out of his own head, let him see how he made John feel.

And Larry just—went— soft under John’s weight, watched with such dark eyes that it put the butterflies back in John’s stomach. 

There was no more talking. Just long, slow thrusts until Larry started getting into the rhythm, rocking his hips to receive John and god—suddenly they were fucking each other in a race to break the motel bed. As if Larry had to test every piece of equipment that came his way.

John came first and he remembered Larry watching with dazed eyes. Until everything got a lot out of control—and John could feel his cock still hard, pounding through the wet-hot rush filling Larry’s ass—and Larry's whole face changed with a shock of pleasure, and he was lost as well. 

That was maybe half an hour ago and John was still halfway on top of Larry. Who was now stroking John's hair, touching his face with so much concentrated tenderness that John thought: _I am never going to get over this_. 

It wasn't because Larry was stunning to look at, it was because of the amazed and quiet way Larry was looking back at him, all his guard let down.

When Larry sat up on the bed—the taut arc of his sleek body facing _away_ , John braced himself: for a brisk departure, for something flippant, for a calculated choice of parting words. For a hotshot attitude that Larry wore every day.

Larry turned his head. "I can't," he said abruptly. “I can't sleep next to anyone else tonight. It's fucking beyond me. I just want _you_.”

It was like some paramount rule was broken, and there would be hell to pay, but Larry couldn't do without John anymore, the same way John— 

—Oh, thought John as an almost physical joy pierced his heart. _Oh._ With a jolt, he realized that there had been a question. "You even have to ask?" 

Larry flopped back onto the bed beside him, and John offered him his arm as a pillow. Larry stared at him with those bottomless blue eyes of his until he fell asleep. 

In the morning, they fit around, into each other so easily again.

  


~~~

  


After that night, they began seeing each other on the regular for furtive trysts in Larry’s truck or for a rare evening in a motel. And even more often just drinking beer in some bar or shooting the breeze with the flight crew. Despite their complete ignorance about ancient civilizations or civil rights, John liked their airmen friends and he liked being around Larry out in the open. Even just as his mechanic, but he had a growing feeling he was fooling himself about that.

In public, Larry was every inch of a cool as a cucumber, smug as anything, mouthy test pilot. They were very careful with their hands and looks around each other, but John could always feel the tug. Especially when Larry would swipe an icy-hot glance his way whenever other men talked about their sweethearts. 

In private, Larry was soft and loving, and he had a dirty mouth on him. He would wrap his arms around John's neck, look at him with guileless blue eyes, and say something so filthy—that John's mind would just short-circuit. And their shirt buttons would shower on the truck bed, for Larry to fuss and complain about his torn shirt later. 

John was more than half in love, to be honest, and he wanted more Larry, and more time. He just wanted to sleep—with Larry and then next to him again, and to wake up to each other in the sunlight of the morning. 

So John told Larry that they should go for a weekend away like normal people, just before Christmas. Somehow, miraculously, Larry said he'd make time.

  


~~~

  


Their winter getaway was easy to put together: a remote cabin in a national park, a last-minute ratty tree with tinsel, a feast of cans. The hardest part was Larry’s gift. There was no helpful magazine advice article on what to get your secret lover without arousing suspicion of his spouse or his federal employer.

Still, John had many long and lonely nights to come up with an idea.

Candles began to go out by the time Larry’s truck screeched under the windows, late. He drove as all pilots: like he had nine lives. 

Larry busted through the door in a storm of guilt and great hair. His mouth was still cold from the outside. "For you," John pushed a gift in his hand, still kissing him. Larry blinked and reached for it, a blank leather-bound notebook. 

“This is for your flight notes,” said John, their fingers touching over the leather. “So I’m always there to keep you safe, even at 350'000 feet altitude.”

Larry’s eyes glistened wet, but it could have been the snowflakes he brought in. His other hand curled into John’s and let something tiny drop. John found a pair of really fucking expensive-looking cufflinks in his palm and Larry flushing red under his stare. 

“I didn’t have time to engrave them,” Larry added in his smooth way that meant he hadn’t dared to. 

John opened his mouth to say that it didn’t matter, that the real gift was this weekend together, but Larry was already pushing him on the bed, laughing, and tumbling on top. “Whoops, I stumbled and fell into you, Bowers. With my dick.”

Who could resist? Not John. Not with that promise. Not when he could watch Larry's perfect naked ass pumping in the closet mirror.

After, John lounged on unmade sheets, lazy and complete while Larry entirely redecorated their tree. He had an endearing frown of utmost concentration and he did the fast work of someone who knew their way around a string of tinsel. His gingerbread men ended up sixty-nining each other. Done, Larry glanced at his watch and strapped it back on.

"You're wearing my undershirt again." John knew it because Larry's were always whiter and cleaner.

Larry honest-to-god blushed. "I know." He moved his shoulders, like he was enjoying the feel of soft cotton. "It makes me feel like you're close. Besides, we're the same size. _Nobody_ should notice."

God, Larry was a romantic sometimes, but also stupendously delusional. John wasn't going to point out that _somebody_ was doing his laundry, for years. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why some shirts suddenly didn't belong. Once, John did try to make a case for Larry’s wife deserving better in the big scheme of things, but they ended up having a row and John didn’t feel like arguing. Not on Christmas. 

"Why are you wearing anything?" asked John, stretching himself and feeling a hot need stir. Those gingerbread men were giving him ideas. "I could go for another round. In five." 

"Sheryl's family is visiting with us for the holidays." John was suddenly prickly aware of how Larry was not looking at him, but hiding behind his long eyelashes. "I can't stay the night. We're going to a musical in Palmdale tomorrow morning. It's for my kids, John." 

Just like that, Larry started dressing. Pants up, belt tight, boots on—a model Air Force captain was re-assembling himself in front of John’s disbelieving eyes. 

"You promised." John felt stupid and naked, knowing that he'd already lost the battle. 

Larry threw him a begging glance, sliding into his leather jacket like into armor. The line of his sex-bruised mouth was getting hard, forbidding. 

"Fuck it. Fine. Fuck off." John was trying to count to ten in his mind. It wasn't working. He couldn't forgive Larry— or loathe him— or live like this— or lose the absolute solace of Larry Trainor’s arms. "Don't drive like a maniac. It's snowing." 

Larry shrugged in a careless way that always made John's stomach plummet. Goddamn flyboy. 

“And John—” Larry’s back was already turned, his shoulders ever so straight. “I hate myself enough, so you don’t have to.”

John grabbed a pillow and yelled angrily into it, so he wouldn’t hear the door bang. 

This was the very moment when the status quo definitively got on John's nerves. Though literally in the middle of the woods, he wanted to stand up and shout it at the world: wasn’t it in the Declaration of Independence that he could lay Larry out, then send him to the Moon and back, then give him a big hero welcome with a kiss on the lips? 

White Christmas would have been a tragic affair if spent alone in a remote cabin with a spindly tree and a bottle of whiskey, drowning in the scent of regrets and your secret lover's cologne. Except that John wasn't moping. John was making plans for his very own pursuit of happiness.

Next month, turbulence forced Larry to go into a nosedive. Nobody on the ground thought he’d pull through it alive. Except that he did, brilliantly, and it moved him up the list to the Mercury program. Because the country needed heroes and it counted on Larry who had no fear of anything except of morality police. 

Meanwhile, some states were doing away with anti-sodomy laws. 

John wished he never knew how it felt to lose Larry even for a second. Not when Larry was only looking at the stars and not seeing how the world on the ground was changing.

  


~~~

  


It was John’s precious one-hour-a-week with Larry and he had a big news about how he'd put in his discharge, yet he still didn’t know how to break it. Without breaking everything.

When he rounded the corner of the railway yard, he could see something was wrong. Larry was pointing his handgun at a man entirely wrapped in dirty bandages and with an old-timey pilot coat thrown on top. The tension in Larry’s braced legs, his death grip on the gun were screaming danger.

John broke into a run.

They weren't usually packing for their rolls in the hay, but two boys had been shot in a nearby town just last week—found entwined in the back of a truck. The risk of exposure felt real and close, and they were both feeling jumpy. 

Hell, John was jumpy enough that for a second he saw double: two Larrys yelling at each other. 

“I keep telling you: I am you!” The man was whisper-shouting at Larry. “From the future!

“Tomorrow, you flame out in a plane crash. Your life as you know it— ends. It's all downhill from here. You’ll be tortured, and you’ll be used, and you’ll have a hell of a radioactive tan. In the year 2020, you’re lonely and disfigured. An outcast with an alien being living inside you.” 

John saw a shudder run the length of Larry’s arm, but he also noticed a particular line in the stranger's shoulders, how effortlessly the coat hung off him. Dread slid down his skin like icy water.

“Bull—shit! Who sent you?” Larry regained a hard edge. “The Soviets?”

“No, it was one of Crazy Jane’s superpowered personalities. She got mad at me for playing Moon River on repeat in my bunk after midnight. She said the team voted for an intervention.” The man shrugged dramatically and this tiniest gesture made John see double Larrys again. 

Was it deja vu? Or deja Larry? 

"He's probably a veteran, Trainor," John put a firm hand on Larry’s shoulder, hoping the touch would sober them both. "He has real problems. Put the gun down. Hey bud, we can drive you to a hospital. Or wherever.”

"Larry, you don’t have sex in 60 years." The wrapped intruder expansively pointed in the direction of Larry's zipper. "I know you care about _that_!" 

The smoky melody in this voice was now thoroughly messing with John’s head. 

"You never see John again. You never see your kids. You sit around all day, and you yearn, and you hate yourself—and that’s your life. Don’t get on that plane, Larry. John, don't let him if you can still stand him.”

Larry’s voice shook. “Are you from military police? Staff Sergeant Bowers and I were just about to share a six-pack and talk—baseball stats.”

The stranger groaned and dropped his head in his arms in such a familiar way that John's heart ached. 

"Larry?" he asked stupidly and made a step towards the guy. John’s mind was in disarray, but not his heart. “How is this true? How aren’t we together, in the future?”

His very own, the pure golden ass of 1961 Trainor threw his hands in the air. "Why are you listening to him?"

“Why do I listen to _you_?” asked John. “Because I love you. No matter how much you want to hide.” He was looking straight at the bandaged man, the other Larry.

Who tapped his chest with a fist, and in front of John’s very eyes, defying all logic and physics, a being made entirely of blue light burst out of it.

Instantly, his Larry and the other Larry went limp and fell to the ground—little tin heroes dropping dead. The blue spirit zapped closer and there was a hum in the air that John understood in his bones as a fully-formed truth: Larry Trainor needed somebody not to take his shit.

When Larry came to himself, flat on his back, John was crouching above him with an old leather-bound notebook. It had dropped out of the other Larry's pocket just before the alien gently whisked him away. 

"Rita Farr?" he grinned, reading out of it. "The future you pals around with Hollywood? A loud girl with many personalities, a kid who’s half-quarterback half-tiny-computer? And a rude—robot? This sounds like a great crew, but it needs a chief. I think we both know the best crew chief in business, Lar.”

  


~~~

  


The next morning, a man in bandages and his blue energy twin were invisibly sitting side by side on a wing of an airplane, watching Captain Larry Trainor saunter towards his X-15. A golden boy in uniform, a proud beautiful _fool_ —it rhymes with _tool_ , the spirit grumbled. It was flickering, wanting to mess up this entire dimension if need be, but the man whispered, "It has to be his choice, Keeg."

Halfway up the rickety ladder to the cockpit Larry stopped and peeled a piece of paper stuck to it. As he read it, his face changed. 

He turned around, the wind in his dark hair. Yet he slowly put one foot up on the next rung, all of him schooled to never give up on a mission. Especially not the one to the stars. There was a heartbeat where nothing happened. Then Larry Trainor jumped off—the full six feet down on the tarmac, and ran back towards his crew chief. 

He never looked back. Not even at the sexiest four-letter word ever paint-sprayed on a wall: NASA. Not when the piece of paper in his hand said: 

     _**Marry me, Trainor. In 2004, when it becomes legal. Or sooner if I can help it.**_  


Up in the atmosphere, an alien being made entirely out of energy came and went, free. Mr. Nobody stuttered in the middle of his villainous monologue rehearsal. A newborn Bruce Wayne cooed at a passing bat. Meanwhile, Larry Trainor was putting in his discharge and finally being honest with his wife. 

“Now what?” asked the man in bandages. The spirit shimmered at him. 

Next, they were gone, unraveled by the same wind that was sweeping the past clean. Maybe back to the future, maybe to become one with the multiverse. 

Only one of Jane’s personalities knew, but she didn’t time-travel and tell.

  


**~SO EXTRA PATROL~**

  


In the year 1962, Larry Trainor went full Hollywood and became a flight instructor to the stars, of a human variety. His own claim to fame was that he started the aviator sunglasses craze. He shared a beach house with his male business partner and a reclusive but still devastating silver-screen star Rita Farr. They held a prized collection of orchids and carnivorous plants, and some outrageous parties on the elusive Danny the Street. Eventually, he saw his kids again.

The same year, a secret meta-human project called The Ant Farm was destroyed by a squadron of flying butts led by a giant talking blob and two attractive men in Zorro masks and tights. Its personnel was transferred to the up-and-coming Area 51 because management wanted to prioritize aliens anyway. All details were accidentally hushed up by a secret-agency typist who spilled coffee on the original report. 

In the 70s, John Bowers marched with Harvey Milk and in a National March on Washington with a hundred thousand other people, in pursuit of happiness. He wasn’t wearing a mask—or tights this time. As John promised Larry, he helped to legalize gay marriage sooner than it happened in the bandaged Larry’s dimension. He never had to jostle for Larry’s private time again and Larry became John’s mom’s absolute favorite family-holiday guest.

In 1988, Cliff Steele got handed a flyer by a mysterious blue-eyed man in a mall—for ten complementary marriage-counseling sessions with the best shrink in town. He was never one to turn down a freebie. So Cliff carried on. If only to make a number of other boneheaded life choices—him being the original Florida Man—but with his wife and daughter happily at his side.

In 2014, Vic Stone didn’t lose his temper and blow up his life because he and his mother were busy helping a sweet older married gay couple, John and Larry, find their lost chihuahua. He went on to be a Hall of Famer as the Gotham Bats quarterback and an inventor of a concussion-proof helmet.

In the year which makes no sense but before she turned five, Kay Challis' father disappeared without a trace. An education trust fund in her name was established by an anonymous benefactor. Her only superpowers remained: time travel and a heavy hand with eyeliner and the fucknuts of the world.

Larry and John did get married, on the same fated, windblown high-desert airfield where John proposed and Larry didn’t crash. The Air Force allowed it because Neil Armstrong was the man of honor.

  


**Author's Note:**

> • Thank you to my ever lovely beta, Peripety, for advice and encouragement! All remaining mistakes are mine.  
> • Small canon details were changed and real history timelines were fudged for better drama.  
> • I watched [**First Man**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVowQ4LgwLk) ~for science and I read around on the golden age of test pilots like Neil Armstrong and our Larry. Verdict: they were incredibly badass.  
> • And Hozier's [**Nina Cried Power**](https://youtu.be/j2YgDua2gpk) fueled this entire fic! I must have listened to it a 100 times, such a John Bowers mood!  
> 


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